


Darkness

by MrProphet



Category: Alice In Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-22
Updated: 2017-04-22
Packaged: 2018-10-22 13:51:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 723
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10698354
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MrProphet/pseuds/MrProphet





	Darkness

There is a kind of darkness that is more than just an absence of light, but becomes a thing in its own right. People talk about it all the time; they talk of night drawing in and the shadows pressing close. They know full well that night is the absence of day and shadow the occlusion of light, but still they speak as if the darkness itself were a thing.

They do this because they know that it sometimes is, and just because it usually isn't is no reason to risk angering it on the few occasions that it matters.

That is the kind of darkness I encountered in the rabbit hole, and in the looking-glass, as I slipped from one world into the next. The doctors say that it was simply a hysterical reaction; a barrier that my mind created, first to preserve my simple, child's mind when I was lost beside the river, and then to protect my delicate sensibilities from something that I saw but must never speak of.

Fiddlesticks. The doctors have a low opinion of all women and see me as an archetype of the fragile ideal they have crafted, weak and timid and incapable of stern and forthright reason. But I know the things that I have seen, and if my sister's silly and immodest behaviour is the worst I had ever had to witness I would have a mind as pure as a pearl, rather than this crazy-paved pavilion, its cracks filled in with that positive darkness of which I speak. They may speak of hysterics and vapours and sad conditions all they like, but I know the truth.

I know that the darkness-that-is - rather than the darkness-that-is-not - is a barrier, but not in my mind. It is a wall between worlds, hidden behind the light and colour of everyday life, unless one gets too close to a gap in the wall. Those gaps wrinkle and pucker the fabric of the world and through these worn-thin patches we can see and touch the darkness and, if we are intemperate in the way that only a young child really can be, walk into it and through it and into other worlds entirely.

Of course, such knowledge comes with a price, and not merely the prodding of doctors who fail to understand the reality of your experiences. If you but once step through into another land, why then you can dismiss it as imagination; the playful wanderings of a young mind at distraction. But when a girl has twice stepped through the darkness into an absurd land, it becomes harder to deny. The knowledge is not dismissed; it may progress, if one is careless and inquisitive in the way that teenagers are wont to be, into understanding, and that is a heavier burden than most people would care to carry.

Because worlds have things that other worlds want, and those other worlds are apt to consider a world that has what they want as a resource; its people - if they are not the object of desire - expendable if it leads to the greater good of what each person is naturally apt to call the 'real' world.

But while other worlds may sometimes be strange, even absurd, they are not unreal. I have cradled the head of many a wild and fanciful creature in the final moments of their lives, felt the blood soak into my pinafore and dry on my hands like grim and sticky gauntlets, and I can tell you that those deaths were as real as any that ever happened on the battlefields of the Crimea or in the alleyways of Whitechapel. I have seen what happens when the tyrants of one world visit their wrath and greed upon another. So it is that I, having seen these things, am driven to guard the boundary darkness and keep such atrocities as I have witnessed from ever happening again.

I am Alice. It's a stupid name enough, I daresay, but it means just what I choose it to mean, and I choose it to mean that I am a Wanderer of the Lands. If you should find yourself at the boundary, looking into that darkness-that-is as it lurks behind the glass, and wonder if you dare to cross, remember this; that to cross is to dare me.


End file.
